The US isn’t winning any popularity contests among Arabs (TRT World)

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman may consider US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo a “dear friend,” but it turns out the US isn’t winning any popularity contests outside the royal palace.

Pompeo is in the region to meet with what he described as America’s “great allies,” Saudi Arabia and the UAE, to build a “global coalition” for the faceoff with Iran. The irony is that a new poll of Arabs finds that the US is considered a much greater threat to the region than Iran.

And in a blow to Pompeo’s ratings-conscious boss, just 12 percent of Arabs said they had a positive view of Donald Trump, far below Vladimir Putin at 28 percent and Turkish President Recip Tayyip Erdogan at 51 percent. In fact, Trump’s policies came in dead last in every one of the ten countries surveyed.